Roger D. Aycock

“ The stars over our speeding helicar glittered down like far, frosty eyes and the gritty red ocean of desert under us lost its harshness and took on a magic pattern of soft, shifting shadows. Phobos paced us across the black night sky like a swift silver morning-star, and the little gray jackals crept out of their dens and howled at her with all the pent-up loneliness of a million, million years.
Cheryl shivered at their keening, and the thought that she could be as skittish as other women gave me a little jolt of surprise. ”

“ I jumped, and the air-scooter went on without me into the night. It wouldn't have worked on Earth, but under Mars' .38 gravity an athletic homo has all the breaks. I landed just inside the guard-rail and dived through the balcony windows with a great crashing of glass before Shanig could clap a hand to the buzzer on his desk.
"Don't touch it," I said, and turned my Quantrell on him.
"You!" Shanig barked. His face went sallower than ever, but his hot black eyes didn't waver. "What do you want here?"
Down the corridor rose a sudden babel of voices—Shanig's crew returning with their prize. ”

“ He went over to the desk where Cheryl had left Cora's cage and fondled the little brute through the wires. He played the very devil in doing it, too. Somehow or other the cage door had worked loose during the time it had been banged about, and Shanig's fumbling hands slid it open.
Cora was out of the cage and through the broken balcony windows in a smoky bluish flash, whizzing like a bullet toward the Argonaut Club and Joey.
VI
Everybody snapped back to normal with a roar. There was a frantic rush of Shanig's uglies trying to escape and of Giles' patrolies collaring them again. ”

“ That aura makes smileys remarkable even among Eetees, so remarkable that nobody had ever brought one in before. It's their mating call, a very practical gimmick evolved to attract each other and at the same time protect themselves from native predators while they carry on their courtship. It works on anything from swamp gnats to Syrtis Major sand snakes, and it's literally irresistible.
Joey looked something like a fist-sized marmoset shaped out of pale blue smoke, his body so insubstantial that you could see the cage wires through and behind him. ”

“ More was at stake than the wasting of Joey's talents on a bad hat like Shanig. There was the inevitable blowup that must come later. When Shanig found out what being too long under a smiley's influence could do to a homo with his financial responsibilities, there would be the devil to pay for fair. ”

“ I pointed her lovely, meteor-dented nose at the sky and blasted off, and the howling of her jets was like a lullaby in my ears. The starry backdrop of space ahead was like a cosmos-sized painting of all Creation, a master canvas done. ”

“ I said, giving Joey's aura time to soak in properly, "that Joey is the first smiley ever captured."
Which was strictly true, though I didn't see fit to mention the second one, a female named Cora which I had left hidden in an old abandoned oxygen reduction plant I knew out in Syrtis Major. I had two good reasons for that: they'd bring higher prices if sold separately, and I wasn't taking any chances on their getting together before I disposed of them. Anything could happen if they did.
"Worth a hundred thousand on Earth," I said. "How much am I bid?" ”

“ The Captain was taking my Quantrell blaster when my reprieve came. One of Shanig's uglies burst into the office with disaster written all over him.
"Chief, the girl's coming up in the lift with another smiley! The whole lower floor is hypnotized. She'd have got me too if the lift hadn't carried me out of reach!"
I'll give Shanig credit for this—he thought fast. He added up the score in a flash and lunged across the desk, yelling for his startled uglies to follow up. If Cheryl got to us with the smiley the jig was up, and he knew it. ”

“ No homo can operate after his fashion without making enemies, and the bigger his business the more powerful his enemies. Vigilance becomes the price of existence, financially speaking, and it was on that point that I figured Shanig had over-reached himself. ”

“ As soon as Shanig was himself again he photovised Perry and ordered him to take the smiley there, partly to get Joey away and partly to cut down breakage expense at the Argonaut. Perry's been there all day, associating with Eetee outlanders and drinking skohl like any common spacehand. He'll drink himself to death before Shanig finds a way to get to him, if we don't hurry. ”

“ In the .38 gravity of Mars, any physical action requires only a fraction more than one-third as much effort as it would require on Earth. And only one-third as much oxygen is needed to sustain that effort.
So a hundred years after Earthmen abandoned the Syrtis Major plant, I had a perfect place to lick my wounds in privacy. I berthed the Annabelle in the old warehouse, opened her up from bow to stern to let out the stink of stale tobacco smoke and machine oil, and brought my second smiley out of the dusty records vault where I had hidden her. ”

“ Sometimes I think I'll never understand women. Here was this gorgeous wench, five-feet-ten and built like a hermit's dream, and what did she pick? An egregious little idiot who—
"Sign here," Shanig grunted. He fitted the paper onto a desk pad and whipped it toward me along with a stylus. ”

“ We compromised finally by listing Joey for proxy sale, and I took him out of Cargo Declarations to clear the air. He would be safe in the Annabelle's cabin because no one who got close enough to steal him would have the heart to do it, and I'd have time while the bids rolled in to sample a pitcher or two of yellow Martian skohl down at the Argonaut Club.
Joey was safe enough, but I wasn't. I hadn't walked more than forty yards from the Annabelle after putting Joey away when I bumped into Captain Giles of the spaceport police.
"Wait up," the Captain said. ”

“ They lie for fun or on principle, depending on the circumstances. But I'm not interested in Perry Acree. If he hadn't tipped Shanig to my smiley none of this would have happened. The Annabelle would be clear of debt and I'd be in the Argonaut instead of Perry. ”

“ She looked hopping mad and pleading at the same time, which is quite a trick even for a redhead.
"You can do it if anyone can. I checked on your background this morning, and it seems that—well, that you may not be the windbag I thought you after all. ”